Sapere Aude
Month: October 2002
2 dweebs clad in strange garments had to hit my doorbell today. Too bad for them that I live on the 4th floor with no elevator 🙂 Here are some of the rules they wanted to inflict on me, but I was quicker and told them to STFU.
Guess I wouldn’t qualify for their elite club. Too bad really.
Last night was one of those rare nights when I remember my dreams the next morning. Strange stuff. First I was visiting some kind of favela in the outskirts of some nondescript swiss city, then I had to take care of raging bulls that wouldn’t chill down. Time to consult some dream interpretation literature.
i felt like checking mail at my employer. i had over 1300 mails. it took me all of 10 min to READ (ahem) them all. what fun.
while trolling the pages of a research group where i have to take exams next week, i stumbled upon a hideous site with ~12 don’ts on a single page. frames, annoying mouse-followers, buttons.. the perfect irony: one of the graduate students there is working on content management as specialty. yet the site is as static as it gets. i could totally install a cms in the time it takes to sit through the exam (20-30 minutes). i’m inclined to tell them, after getting my results: “oh and by the way, you may want to look into getting a real cms for your site. bye”
yeah i know i’m bitchy today. first i went to the main library, only to find that they have far too few online desks (all taken) what’s up with that? who these days comes to a library without a laptop? then i get home and try to get my desktop running again. one hard disk makes “clack clack clack” noises upon boot. dead.
it’s disheartening to see how many of my friends are oozing boredom these days. rather than being active, they fool around with their gf / bf most of their waking moments, rarely leave their home, and are generally hesitant to do anything outside their daily chores. with friends like that, no wonder zurich holds increasingly less appeal. time to meet some new faces. danger signs to watch out for if you want to detect calcification.
the stupid fucks over at compaq hide their product downloads behind a non working javascript form. one has to be lethally stupid to make it impossible to get free support. WTF. i need a bios upgrade because my armada m700 doesn’t like wifi cards. ARRRGH
die compaq die.
next step in the quest to bootstrap a blog ecosystem: find people to act as blog beacons. these people should ideally have something interesting to say, be outspoken and a desire to experiment with new forms of expression. here is my current wish list:
i’m talking to a few friends about launching a blog hosting operation at university of zurich. blogs are not on the swiss mind yet (only 20 known blogs), but at the same time, more and more people are losing their fear of “them computers” and are starting to do more than just surf and play silly online games. blogs are now on the map at uc berkeley, the natives haven’t discovered it yet though. i’m wondering what price students would be willing to pay for such a service. i’m thinking around 20 bucks per semester.
i wonder when carl will finish the comments module, it’s getting annoying
but until we have a healthy blog population in .ch (working on it) probably inevitable to get some traffic?
the new professor at my institute, abraham bernstein, has some very interesting research going on. i shall definitely try to attend his seminar social and economic foundations of computer science. i know i pledged never to consider a phd at university of zurich, but i could imagine a external phd in the field of semantic web. as long as i don’t have to sit at ifi all day and play underpaid secretary and handle unmotivated and lazy students, plus i don’t want to deal with office politics there. who knows, so many things to do.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 